Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Be Prepared And Make The Most Out Of Your 30 Minutes!

  

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There are several factors that go into a successful weekly client call. The objective is to make the most out of the 30 minutes you have. You need to remember to talk strategy, discuss opportunities passed, active pipeline, how the list sources are and what the audience is saying. You need to deliver on “take aways” and action items from the previous week and always be punctual with dead lines. You need to provide your client with something new about their target market every week and have a plan of growth for the next. Whether it’s an adjustment in the pitch from the Sales team or a new Case Study to push out from Marketing, change is good in this business.

You may be saying to yourself “Is that all Jill? We have a hard stop at 30 minutes, how am I possibly going to remember all of that….”

Have an outline! Organize your calls much like you prepare for a presentation and go down your punch list. You are the leader, it is your job to add value and provide insight into their target market.

My Director, Matt Fitts, does a really good job of leading a structured call that touches upon each of these points. In his absence, I can confidently mirror his style and have a constructive business conversation with our clients, covering everything from the week with marching orders for the next call.

We have some awesome tools that help us do our job more effectively and efficiently. Salesforce, GoodData, Pinpointe, ActOn Software, even Excel help us work as a team extremely well every week, so why wouldn’t we want to share that detail with our clients?

Recently, I had a client call that I took with one of our Business Development Reps, Liz Wilson, and I hung up really satisfied with the content we were able to cover. On our call, we were able to reschedule opportunities, get a sense of where the new leads were in the client’s pipeline, and come up with some new target organizations. Liz discussed all of her key accounts, her pipeline for the week and we concluded on a good note. Liz would follow up with the new targets immediately and I would work on slides for our client’s firm meeting, outlining leads passed per demographic, industry and revenue. I felt good about our action items, but even better about Liz’s phone presence. I swung by Liz’s cube to give her kudos on the constructive call and was intrigued by what I saw on her screen.

Liz is a new contributor to AG Salesworks’ Corporate Blog and a busy member of the Social Media Team. While she isn’t photographing for our website or posting to Tumblr, she is a very impressive BDR. I’ve already made Liz bashful once this week, freaking out over the weekly recap up on her screen. Since Liz started on this program, she began a working word document, dated each week with detailed notes on what was discussed and what are her action items. She can reference any conversation we’ve had in the past 6 months within minutes. I thought this was extremely valuable and made for some good “food for thought” for all of our Inside Sales Reps.

Whether you are a Manager looking for some insight on how to carry on an organized call or an Inside Rep looking for guidance on how to better communicate, my advice to you is get an outline together. Be confident, polished and speak concretely about your week. Have your reference points in front of you and push yourself to add value no matter what. Trust me, you’ll surprise yourself.